Lessons

Lesson Info

Hue Saturation For Color Correction

So we're gonna talk about color shifting and... What do I wanna say about this? I find that, myself, I can be a one trick pony, and what I mean by that is if I'm used to using one single technique, that's all I ever do. And then other jobs come on and I have difficulty. So I really want you to try to, if you are willing, to play along. Try to explore on your next job, or just for practice, and do all of these. Do all of them for the same job and see the result. And I have a theory about this and here it is, my theory is that if you are willing to try offline. What I mean by offline is not under a deadline. Not when you have job and you're hair's on fire, but you're at playtime, that's when you can learn these techniques. This is very hard to do when the gun's to your head, so to speak. Do you know what I mean, when you've gotta really hurry. So my suggestion is to do this offline. So when I look at hue saturation, gradient map, camera raw, and channel pulling. Alright, real life case s...

tudy, this is real life action. This is how it goes, and did I say I was production heavy? I am production heavy, that means what are you gonna do? Oh, my heavens, and I have to hurry. So for this book title project, this cover design that I had to work on, that much money and about that much time. It happens, books don't make what they used to, and these are done. I had literally a ten minute session with a gal, four covers needed, one model, and one dress. Okay, cheers, ten minutes, so 35 to 50. Did I write how many images? It's something like 35 to 50 and half of them are blurry 'cause I was hurrying so much. Ten minutes is not long, oh, I'm sorry, that meant get her getting into the dress also. Like, it was ten minutes so here was the job. I had to make them all look different. So they wanted this style, apparently it's an Edwardian thing, and it has to be a very particular style, but they wanted different colors. So this is the approach I took, and I'm gonna use this as a sample. So we have, I'm gonna show that pattern in just a second. We have a magenta dress, we have a green dress, pardon me, blue dress. And if we have time, I'm gonna show how... I don't know if you can see it on the screen. You may have to trust me, do you see there's a pattern in there? That's another technique you add to change your files. If we have time, I'll add that at the end. Alright, so let's get going on this. It's gonna be so much fun. Alright, alright, the first technique, which is very ubiquitous, everyone knows about this, but I'm gonna talk about, is hue saturation. So here is the file that we have to work with. She's masked out, we just do this for ease. I just like to have it already masked out, and I need to change her colors. So what most people will do, I'm gonna go ahead and copy my mask. This is not a masking class, so I don't wanna spend time worrying about masking with you guys, if that's cool with you. There are masking classes on CreativeLive. So what I've done on this hue saturation, is I've simply done a hue shift. And what a hue shift means is you have a master color, and you slide over to get a new one. However, and I know you guys know this, it's pretty basic. It's un-colorized, do you see that, so do you see? It's a hue shift, and it's un-colorized, and you color a bar, it's pretty basic. Now, the issue with this technique is, well, everything is colorized. If it's not linked or clipped to it, the whole image is colorized. So if you use this technique, I'm gonna put that mask back on it. You have to mask it, her mask is very rough, 'cause I don't need a tight one because I'm gonna clip it. Do you understand that, so basic, easy peasy lemon squeezy. In addition to that, from hue, you can go to color. And what color does is allow the tonal value to show through. I know you guys know this, it's pretty basic, but let's just cover it. So hue shift on the mode called color allows you to see... Tone, okay, basic, no big deal. No questions, I'm gonna move on. As I said, I start very easy, and then, we're gonna move to more complicated. Alright, I feel the need to explain just a little bit that I have a gal with a separate head, and I'm colorizing underneath that, just so you understand what the layer composition is. Alright, on this one, what we're gonna do is, is what we call targeted hue selection. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna throw that color away. Once again, it's that same old, lovely, dyed in the wall, hue saturation. Colorize with hue. (typing) Alright, now, on this one, I wanna do something different, and what that is, is when you first start a hue saturation, feel truly important because this is one of those little, "Ah, shucks," moments where folks get a little bit in trouble. When you start an adjustment layer, by the way, I didn't explain that, did I? I am pulling up adjustment layers from the base. We work non-destructively. I'm just gonna close that for a second. Clean my window up for you, alright. I call this a delta dawn, what's that flower you have on, this little round thing. I like to sing, and I'm going to hue saturation. If I just do that with my hand up in the air, it doesn't allow me to label it. And you know we have good production skills in this house, don't we? So what we always do is we take our left hand if we're right handed, we hold the option key, and then we pick the hue saturation. And why are we doing this, and why am I beating this poor horse? He's probably lying dead in the gutter at this point. Good production techniques, number one pet peeve I have for working other re-touchers, they do not label their layers, nor their adjustment layers. Trust me, you want to label your layers, and as a side note, I often will put a bullet, option eight. And then write hue saturation, or whatever I wanna do to indicate it. Why I put a bullet on that? On Photoshop, do you guys know this fantastic trick? If you hold the control and the command key down on a Mac, it will show you all the layers that are visible right there, do you understand? If you have a work production habit that is so stellar that you put bullets in front of all your adjustment layers, I'm gonna know that that's an adjustment layer, not a pixel layer. (gasping) Trust me, it's good technique, trust me, trust me! Okay, I'm gonna throw that extra one out, alright. Now, as I said, this is a targeted hue saturation. So what that means, targeted is I need to be on the code for that hue saturation, and I call it the code. People call, I don't know if you guys have any suggestions what you call it. I call it the code 'cause that's the mathematical information there, and that's the mask. And then the other thing you need to be on is you need to be on the targeted picker. Targeted pickers, so get on that finger and come on over here to your dress and say, "Hey, what color is that?" And Photoshop is so courteous, it's gonna tell you. Now, I would never have guessed that that was cyan. I would've thought that was greens. Photoshop's telling me something different. If I click in a different area, oh, that's green, so isn't that interesting? Photoshop is telling you two different things. Photoshop is telling you that, "Hey, lady, you got a lot of green "in your three quarter tones, and you have a lot of cyan "in your quarter tones or mid tones, I should say for this." So what I'm gonna first do is I'm gonna go to the green, and I'm gonna say, "Yeah, let's make that a different color." So I'm gonna shift that. Can you see that, it's in the shadows now. Did I say that that was in the shadows? I did, I lie sometimes, but I wasn't lying back then. On the screen, this might be a little difficult, pardon me, to see, but I'm actually changing the tones in the shadows. You can start seeing it come through in the three quarter tones, and then I'm gonna go back to the cyans 'cause you remember it said cyan for this area up here? And now, I'm gonna change the cyans. I can go green, or I can go more blue. And what happens with this technique is it's more multi-dimensional, can we say that? It's almost like split toning. So I'm gonna clip it, but holding the option key and grouping it with the mother layer as I like to call it. So what that means, the masking is being done or controlled by the mother layer, and I hold the option key and click on the line in between the two layers. So this is the master layer, or the mother, and this is the little baby, and how you know it, it's attached. Think of it like a papoose, there's a little arrow here that comes down, and the icons have all moved over. So why I did that is, well now I don't have to mask it. I mean, I like masking, but I don't wanna mask if I don't have to. So, we just took that tiny, little baby, every day hue saturation, and just did something more complicated and not so monochromatic, okay? And it's called targeted, well I call it targeted color correction. You can call it what you want. I'm gonna switch over to the keynote for just a second. Okay, so, for your notes, 'cause you will have these for your notes, I just wanna reiterate that what I've done is I've done a common, easy technique, which is hue saturation, and I wanna remind you, most people when they first start out will do it from the image menu. Please don't, that's destructive, you don't like that. What you wanna do is come down to the delta dawn, what that's that flower you have on. You know you're never gonna forget that now that I've sang that, and you're gonna pick it from there. And on this one, we did just a master hue shift. It's non-destructive, it's happy, it makes everyone pretty. The next one that I just showed what we did was we did hue saturation but targeted. So it's a targeted auto-select target adjustment, that's a mouthful, isn't it? You can call it the finger, you can call it whatever you want, and what it allowed me to do is control individual colors, and right here, I wanna be really clear. Under here, you can find all your colors. Right here, I never use this. I've never in my entire 25 however years, I don't even know how long it's been there. I've never used the presets, I suppose you can, but I've never touched these. I felt the need to show 'em to you because it's there. Alright, so what you wanna be is on the master, and I just wanna remind you, if you click underneath, you're gonna see that there's red, yellow, green, cyan, magenta, you guys good with that? Okay, so let's re-cap this for option one. What is it, basic method, good, folks use it. Drawback is you have to mask it, color looks a little flat, okay? Trust me, we're gonna speed up here so don't let me lose you. Second option is the targeted hue shift. Nice, little thing for you to see, you'll know that's what it is. You get a richer color shift, often time, there's no need to mask. Very fast solve, looks more dimensional, so I'm gonna put a challenge out there for you guys. Perhaps, start looking at this. I do need to put a caveat out there, and I wanna point this out right now. It's particularly bad on the screen, not so bad on a printed file. Occasionally, what you'll find with images like this and taffeta, is you get this weird haloing in the three quarter tones, the shadows. This technique will not fix that, the colorized, the regular hue saturation, normal, will get rid of that. So what I do often is I will actually, I prefer the targeted option, and then I'll put a colorized hue on top of it. Put a black mask on it, and just paint it in in my problem areas because I want the overall picture to have a richer look.